In a long and extensive overview in Thursday’s New York Sun, real estate columnist Michael Stoler suggests “cautious optimism” about the rebirth of the city’s hospitality industry, which mainly means hotels. Although his report was primarily confined to Manhattan, he had one juicy piece of news of keen interest to Downtown Brooklyn.
Boymelgreen Development has sold its property on Atlantic and Smith Street, which its has called the Smith, to Hersha Hospitality Trust, a real estate development trust, for $17.24 million.
This building contains 50 condos and a 93-room hotel. According to Stoler, Hersha plans to spend another $6 million to finish the hotel.
People in Downtown Brooklyn and especially in Boerum Hill will cheer this news once it gets out. For most, it seems that Boymelgreen has been building this structure for a decade. In the firm’s defense, demanding engineering and construction was required to build the underground garage and foundation because is rests over a subway line. Hersha plans to ignore the name Smith; the hotel will be called the Nu and should open by the end of the third quarter. He had better plan a boffo ribbon-cutting.
The college-packed neighborhood of Downtown Brooklyn might get to add another prestigious university to its resident list: New York University.
In a decision years in the making, New York University has finally chosen Downtown Brooklyn and Governors Island as sites to build satellite campuses of up to one million square feet each, according to Washington Square News (WSN), the newspaper of NYU. Announced at a press conference/open house on Wednesday, the decision comes as part of the university’s 25-year expansion plan, which requires almost half of the university’s 6 million square feet of growth to be outside its current Washington Square area.
The campuses will include academic and residential buildings, and Governors Island would also include athletic facilities, the Real Deal reported. No specific sites in either location have been pinpointed yet.
Planning documents displayed at the NYU open house showed that between 2.4 million and 3.2 million of the 6 million square feet of expansion space will not be in the Village, WSN reported. Like Governors Island, Downtown Brooklyn could each contribute up to one million square feet of space, officials told WSN.
NYU decided to expand outside of its Village neighborhood after many deliberations with neighboring residents who have complained that the university’s buildings are “ugly and enormous … [and] were ruining the Village,” according to the New York Times. So to lessen the burden upon the area’s residents, who would also be plagued inevitable construction, the university has been looking into alternative areas like Downtown Brooklyn and Midtown Manhattan. What remains to be seen is if residents of Downtown Brooklyn will have the same complaints about the proposed expansion into their neighborhood.
The university is still in discussion on full expansion plans. Among many other things still to do in its developing plans, it still needs to acquire the rights to develop on Governors Island. But discussions about the site began last May when state-run Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation (GIPEC) approached NYU. GIPEC is redeveloping the island with intentions that part of the island go toward educational development. To do this, GIPEC is working with five redesign firms, including SMWM, the leading architectural firm for NYU’s 2031 expansion plan, reported WSN.
— By Jacqui Ryan and Dennis Holt
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2007
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Just a reminder, though -- It’s not considered polite to paste the entire story on your blog. Most blogs post a summary or the first paragraph,( 40 words) then post a link to the rest of the story. That helps increase click-throughs for everyone, and minimizes copyright issues.
So please keep posting, but not the entire article. arturc at att.net
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